Quite possibly, the least interesting news I have read today is that Michael Barrymore is to be interviewed about the death of Stuart Lubbock by Jeremy Kyle.
I am pleased to say that I have never seen a Jeremy Kyle show in its entirety, just odd bits in my local barber.
From what little I have seen, Kyle's sole purpose is to humiliate slightly dim people who would otherwise have been humiliated on, say, the front page of the Daily Mail.
You know the sort of thing: "I had sex with the neighbour's pet dog." (This is an illustrative point, not something I have done.)
Now quite why Barrymore would want to appear on the show is anyone's guess.
He is called an 'entertainer' in the press but from what I have seen he hasn't done much entertaining for many years. The last time I saw him, he did a sort of Basil Fawlty act on a terrible show called 'Strike It Lucky' and then a man called Lubbock fell in Barrymore's swimming pool, not in the show, and drowned.
Part of the subsequent interest in Barrymore is that Lubbock was found to have severe anal injuries. And on a completely different subject, Barrymore is gay.
I am not a snob but I don't pay much attention to what appears in the tabloid newspapers so to read now about Barrymore makes me wonder what this is really all about.
His career has obviously tanked since the tragedy but I reckon a one trick pony like Barrymore might have struggled in subsequent years anyway.
There must be three possible reasons for him to appear on a show like Kyle's.
One is that Barrymore wants to confess, to tell the full story, if he hasn't already. If he is to tell us what he has said before, then what's the point? For us to feel sorry for him?
Two is that he wants to resurrect his career on the grounds that, even if he makes a complete tool of himself, the old adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity still holds true.
Or three, he just needs the money.
He must have reasoned that any of the three options above will make his life better than it is now, in one way or the other.
And he will come out of this at least no worse off than he started.
I know nothing about poor Mr Lubbock but I am pretty sure there is little for his memory to gain from this. And nothing but more distress for his family.
Unless Barrymore really does come out with something approaching a confession, then they will have no more answers than they did before.
Kyle wins because he gets good ratings and the tabloids and gossip magazines will gain extra readers too.
And that explains why it's all our fault.
We're the ones who watch Kyle, who buy the scandal sheets and help keep this awful tragedy (for Lubbock and his family) in the headlines. Without us, the family might be allowed to grieve, albeit painfully and slowly, without any real answers.
This tabloid world we watch gets worse by the day and on so many occasions the bad guys do best out of it.
Thursday 29 May 2014
Wednesday 28 May 2014
Can the cans?
I like to listen to my music loud.
Not totally stupid Motorhead loud, but loud enough to allow myself to shake my imaginary hair about during the rock tunes.
But my iPod doesn't allow me to do that.
There's an EU imposed noise restrictor which means that certain songs are barely audible at all, particularly the ones which are 're-mastered' as we music folk call tarting up the sound.
I can understand it, they don't want people to make themselves completely deaf by having the volume set at pneumatic drill level. But by the same token, I'd like it louder than it is.
As old age creeps up on me, the loud music I have listened to all my life has come back to haunt me and it's called tinnitus. My left ear rings and hisses all the time and particularly late at night when I am trying to sleep. Thanks to Jethro Tull, Airbourne (the worst culprits) and Status Quo to name but three for that.
I also realise that listening to loud music is not exactly going to cure my bad ears but I would like some choice in the matter.
I was on the aircraft on the way to Greece last year, trying to listen to a few tunes but the droning of the engines was all over the music.
And it's the same everywhere else, walking up the road, sitting on a bus. It's not bloody loud enough.
There used to be this gadget thingee called 'Gopod' which would remove the noise limiter but that's all gone now.
I have always preferred the in-ear headphones for matters of convenience and I always think the big ones look a bit mad, but I am going to have to think about it.
I went to PC World tonight and found myself trying out some 'Beats' headphones by Dr Dre who may not be a doctor at all (I seem to remember him producing Mr Mathers at one time). They sounded good too. As it is almost payday I thought: shall I?
My mind was made up when I saw the price. £270. Two hundred and seventy quid for a pair of earphones which, I am quite sure, looked more than slightly ridiculous.
How on earth can anyone justify £270 for some cans (as we used to call them), but then I realised that people must be buying them.
They were not stupidly loud but they were louder and fuller and I couldn't hear anything else, like the assistant mouthing "Can I help you, Sir', or maybe it was 'You really are too old to be trying those!"
So I tried a cheaper pair - a mere £130, these - and they sounded pretty good too. I'm going to have to save up.
I still cannot get over the iPod malarkey.
As recently as 1992, we went to the Greek Island of Skopelos for a fortnight and I took my Sony Walkman and about a dozen tapes, which took up most of my hand luggage.
Today, I have this contraption which is smaller than my Walkman and contains nearly 12,000 songs, almost all of which are detested by Mrs J. (Result!)
In the meantime, I have a dilemma. I want to listen to my music on holiday and I want to hear it loud enough to make it worthwhile.
Do I have to just put up with quiet music, should I invest in a big fuck off pair of headphones or is there a tweak to the iPod I don't know about? Knowing Apple, there is no tweak available and if there is they will do something very quickly to make sure it isn't there for long.
I hope I found out soon, certainly before my tinnitus gets much worse.
Not totally stupid Motorhead loud, but loud enough to allow myself to shake my imaginary hair about during the rock tunes.
But my iPod doesn't allow me to do that.
There's an EU imposed noise restrictor which means that certain songs are barely audible at all, particularly the ones which are 're-mastered' as we music folk call tarting up the sound.
I can understand it, they don't want people to make themselves completely deaf by having the volume set at pneumatic drill level. But by the same token, I'd like it louder than it is.
As old age creeps up on me, the loud music I have listened to all my life has come back to haunt me and it's called tinnitus. My left ear rings and hisses all the time and particularly late at night when I am trying to sleep. Thanks to Jethro Tull, Airbourne (the worst culprits) and Status Quo to name but three for that.
I also realise that listening to loud music is not exactly going to cure my bad ears but I would like some choice in the matter.
I was on the aircraft on the way to Greece last year, trying to listen to a few tunes but the droning of the engines was all over the music.
And it's the same everywhere else, walking up the road, sitting on a bus. It's not bloody loud enough.
There used to be this gadget thingee called 'Gopod' which would remove the noise limiter but that's all gone now.
I have always preferred the in-ear headphones for matters of convenience and I always think the big ones look a bit mad, but I am going to have to think about it.
I went to PC World tonight and found myself trying out some 'Beats' headphones by Dr Dre who may not be a doctor at all (I seem to remember him producing Mr Mathers at one time). They sounded good too. As it is almost payday I thought: shall I?
My mind was made up when I saw the price. £270. Two hundred and seventy quid for a pair of earphones which, I am quite sure, looked more than slightly ridiculous.
How on earth can anyone justify £270 for some cans (as we used to call them), but then I realised that people must be buying them.
They were not stupidly loud but they were louder and fuller and I couldn't hear anything else, like the assistant mouthing "Can I help you, Sir', or maybe it was 'You really are too old to be trying those!"
So I tried a cheaper pair - a mere £130, these - and they sounded pretty good too. I'm going to have to save up.
I still cannot get over the iPod malarkey.
As recently as 1992, we went to the Greek Island of Skopelos for a fortnight and I took my Sony Walkman and about a dozen tapes, which took up most of my hand luggage.
Today, I have this contraption which is smaller than my Walkman and contains nearly 12,000 songs, almost all of which are detested by Mrs J. (Result!)
In the meantime, I have a dilemma. I want to listen to my music on holiday and I want to hear it loud enough to make it worthwhile.
Do I have to just put up with quiet music, should I invest in a big fuck off pair of headphones or is there a tweak to the iPod I don't know about? Knowing Apple, there is no tweak available and if there is they will do something very quickly to make sure it isn't there for long.
I hope I found out soon, certainly before my tinnitus gets much worse.
Tuesday 27 May 2014
Radio Nowhere
I am a radio man.
As a smallish boy, I listened to Radio Luxembourg, an English speaking commercial station.
I listened mostly at night, tucked up in bed, with the sound swishing and sometimes disappearing altogether. It was pretty well the only place I could hear Pop Music.
The BBC, prior to 1968, had the Light Programme (a sort of Radio 2 for Octogenarians), the Third Programme (Radio 3, basically) and the Home Service (Radio 4). For anyone who wanted to listen to anything other than music from the shows or band music, there were the Pirates (until Harold Wilson got rid of them) and Radio Luxembourg.
1968 changed all that, giving us Radio 1. Tony Blackburn played us the music of the time and it was great.
Step forward to 2014 and radio has ballooned.
We now have loads of BBC national stations along with countless independent (commercial) stations theoretically competing with each other.
I do watch some television, mainly sport, but radio is my favourite media outlet.
I listen to BBC Radio 2, Five Live and 6 Music at various and varying times.
Commercial radio holds no interest for me.
They all sound exactly the same, playing the same dreary generic music on an endless loop.
The presenters are almost all bland and accent free.
I did use to listen to local BBC radio in the form of BBC Radio Bristol but even that has become a trial. Allow me to give my view as to why.
I came late to Radio Bristol.
I listened to some of its great presenters like John Turner who was, for a time, the voice of radio in our area. Similarly, Keith Warmington, the Cornish schoolteacher/musician and the greatest political interviewer at the station was a must in the drive time slot. And Roger Bennett, the doyen of the breakfast show, Morning West.
Alas, none of these presenters are with us on the radio anymore, and sadly Roger Bennett is no longer with us at all. And Radio Bristol suffers horribly.
The daytime schedule clunks along miserably with square pegs in round holes and some pegs which shouldn't be there at all.
The amiable breakfast show host Steve Le Fevre would be far better in a relaxed afternoon slot, the mid morning presenter John Darvall's show is as dull as ditchwater, dear old Steve Yabsley continues with his madcap mirth and an afternoon show with Laura Rawlings specialises in D list celebs.
Only when the excellent Geoff Twentyman comes on at 4.00pm do we hear what a professional broadcaster is meant to sound like.
The weekend is the same with just Ali Vowles excellent Breakfast Show on a Saturday and, yes, Geoff Twentyman again (thank god) and generic rubbish, a three hour medical show, two amateur women (who unaccountably won a Bronze radio award) and wall-to-wall dross on a Sunday.
And guess what? No one's listening.
Well, that's not entirely true. With listening figures tumbling through the floor, at least there is a healthy audience of pensioners, catered for perfectly with some of the oldest music on radio - a bit of a throwback to the Light Programme, really.
I ask myself: what does Radio Bristol do that it's commercial rivals can't and don't?
The first answer is sport which continues to be excellent under the new editorship of Richard Hoskin and the vital involvement of Geoff Twentyman. Apart from that?
Formulaic music, generic presenters (and endless stand-ins) and nothing that makes it sound like a local station.
I can't understand for the life of me how managing editor Tim Pemberton is still in a job.
On his watch, the reach of listeners has bombed, the quality of programmes and presenters has done likewise and it sounds like Radio Anywhere.
As I pay my TV license I feel I am entitled to at least something to listen to but as things stand there's nothing.
My grand plan for Radio Bristol is as follows:
Put Ali Vowles on the Breakfast Show
Bring in younger, fresher presenters who are local and understand the area
Have a more adventurous music playlist - don't just cater for the over 70s
Have a harder news show at lunchtime
Scrap the D list celeb nonsense in the afternoon
Have a Soccer AM type sports show on a Saturday morning, presented by local talent - there's loads of it out there, don't bring in some journeyman from Hereford and Worcester.
Oh that's just a start.
I haven't charged for my advice but I am open to offers.
Radio Bristol used to have something going for it but now it's just going nowhere.
As a smallish boy, I listened to Radio Luxembourg, an English speaking commercial station.
I listened mostly at night, tucked up in bed, with the sound swishing and sometimes disappearing altogether. It was pretty well the only place I could hear Pop Music.
The BBC, prior to 1968, had the Light Programme (a sort of Radio 2 for Octogenarians), the Third Programme (Radio 3, basically) and the Home Service (Radio 4). For anyone who wanted to listen to anything other than music from the shows or band music, there were the Pirates (until Harold Wilson got rid of them) and Radio Luxembourg.
1968 changed all that, giving us Radio 1. Tony Blackburn played us the music of the time and it was great.
Step forward to 2014 and radio has ballooned.
We now have loads of BBC national stations along with countless independent (commercial) stations theoretically competing with each other.
I do watch some television, mainly sport, but radio is my favourite media outlet.
I listen to BBC Radio 2, Five Live and 6 Music at various and varying times.
Commercial radio holds no interest for me.
They all sound exactly the same, playing the same dreary generic music on an endless loop.
The presenters are almost all bland and accent free.
I did use to listen to local BBC radio in the form of BBC Radio Bristol but even that has become a trial. Allow me to give my view as to why.
I came late to Radio Bristol.
I listened to some of its great presenters like John Turner who was, for a time, the voice of radio in our area. Similarly, Keith Warmington, the Cornish schoolteacher/musician and the greatest political interviewer at the station was a must in the drive time slot. And Roger Bennett, the doyen of the breakfast show, Morning West.
Alas, none of these presenters are with us on the radio anymore, and sadly Roger Bennett is no longer with us at all. And Radio Bristol suffers horribly.
The daytime schedule clunks along miserably with square pegs in round holes and some pegs which shouldn't be there at all.
The amiable breakfast show host Steve Le Fevre would be far better in a relaxed afternoon slot, the mid morning presenter John Darvall's show is as dull as ditchwater, dear old Steve Yabsley continues with his madcap mirth and an afternoon show with Laura Rawlings specialises in D list celebs.
Only when the excellent Geoff Twentyman comes on at 4.00pm do we hear what a professional broadcaster is meant to sound like.
The weekend is the same with just Ali Vowles excellent Breakfast Show on a Saturday and, yes, Geoff Twentyman again (thank god) and generic rubbish, a three hour medical show, two amateur women (who unaccountably won a Bronze radio award) and wall-to-wall dross on a Sunday.
And guess what? No one's listening.
Well, that's not entirely true. With listening figures tumbling through the floor, at least there is a healthy audience of pensioners, catered for perfectly with some of the oldest music on radio - a bit of a throwback to the Light Programme, really.
I ask myself: what does Radio Bristol do that it's commercial rivals can't and don't?
The first answer is sport which continues to be excellent under the new editorship of Richard Hoskin and the vital involvement of Geoff Twentyman. Apart from that?
Formulaic music, generic presenters (and endless stand-ins) and nothing that makes it sound like a local station.
I can't understand for the life of me how managing editor Tim Pemberton is still in a job.
On his watch, the reach of listeners has bombed, the quality of programmes and presenters has done likewise and it sounds like Radio Anywhere.
As I pay my TV license I feel I am entitled to at least something to listen to but as things stand there's nothing.
My grand plan for Radio Bristol is as follows:
Put Ali Vowles on the Breakfast Show
Bring in younger, fresher presenters who are local and understand the area
Have a more adventurous music playlist - don't just cater for the over 70s
Have a harder news show at lunchtime
Scrap the D list celeb nonsense in the afternoon
Have a Soccer AM type sports show on a Saturday morning, presented by local talent - there's loads of it out there, don't bring in some journeyman from Hereford and Worcester.
Oh that's just a start.
I haven't charged for my advice but I am open to offers.
Radio Bristol used to have something going for it but now it's just going nowhere.
Monday 26 May 2014
Thoughts of a son of immigrants
I wake up to the sight of UKIP leader Nigel Farage's gurning face on my Guardian, his one man band political party having topped the Euro elections.
And I read about France, which has lurched alarmingly to the right, embracing an openly fascist party.
How did it come to this?
A recent poll of UKIP supporters found 51% of them felt immigrants should be helped to return to their countries of birth, plus their families even if they were born here.
If enacted into law, this would have issues for quite a few people including me.
My grandfather on my dad's side came to England from Norway. He was too young to fight in World War 1 and too old to fight in World War 2 but during the latter he helped enforce the nightly black outs in Bristol, walking the streets as the deadly Luftwaffe bombed the city below.
My dad joined the Merchant Navy at 15, joining the Atlantic convoys who helped feed the British people, dodging the U boats.
Some years after the war, my father met my mother in Rotterdam.
My mother's family lost three homes during World War 2 and all their possessions several times over.
In the 1950s, she married my father and moved to Britain where she stayed for the rest of her life.
No one in my family ever claimed benefits - in fact my grandfather worked well into his late seventies.
They're all dead now but the fact remains that I am the son of people who came to this country. And in the eyes of many UKIP supporters, I should be repatriated. Should it be to Norway, where I have never been, or the Netherlands? And should my own children be 'sent back' too? Where does the line of immigration end?
Obviously, I don't know what the reaction of neighbours was when Alfred Johansen arrived from Norway. Were they concerned he would take their job or bring with him his own Scandinavian culture? If his new neighbours had been an early version of the Farages, would they have protested and made racist comments about him?
Or when Neeltje Verburg arrived from the Netherlands. Did they really want her sort in their neighbourhood, even though she spoke near perfect English? And what if she started breeding?
We live, so say, in enlightened times but just how enlightened are they really?
Britain has returned MEPs who support the break up of the NHS, the return of grammar schools, who want to double defence spending, to ensure the very richest are taxed at the same rate of the very poorest and who blame nearly all our problems on foreigners (the main UKIP issue).
Whilst UKIP represents the hopefully temporary triumph of hate over hope, it is currently a step too far to compare them with openly fascist parties, but only a step.
At times of high unemployment and austerity political extremists gain support because of fear. Look at the rise of the German Nazis for example and the National Front here in the UK before Thatcher came along and stole their clothes. And now the rise of UKIP has effectively destroyed the fascist BNP.
Laughably, Farage presents himself as somehow anti-establishment, as befits a privately educated former city trader. The beer-swilling, cigarette-smoking man-of-the-people image he presents is a million miles away from the reality.
The media, and in particular, the BBC has a lot to answer for here, embracing as it has personality politics, ignoring it's public service ethic.
Papers like the Daily Mail present politics as they present Britain, where everything is broken and nothing works and we're being engulfed by benefit-scrounging foreigners.
UKIP feeds from this discontent like flies on a cow pat and in a country and a world which has suffered terribly since Farage's friends in the city establishment almost destroyed our economy people reach for simplistic alternatives and someone to blame.
In my view, the political parties need to react positively to what is happening.
Cameron's Tories will, I am sure, react by moving to the right and by saying all the 'right' things on immigration to, as they will see it, appease those who have moved to UKIP.
The parties of the centre and centre left need to argue a very different case.
The reality remains that the UK remains 89% white and we are not being swamped.
The overwhelming majority of people who come to the UK do so to work, just like the overwhelming majority of Brits who go to Europe.
Someone needs to make the case that it benefits all of us to have an internationalist attitude and that pulling up the drawbridge now will be self-defeating.
Yes, UKIP's 'victory' was where two out of three people didn't bother to vote and seven out of 10 who did vote did not vote UKIP.
We really do need hope, not hate, and whilst hate has won this time we need people will positive ideas and vision to make sure it doesn't happen again.
And I read about France, which has lurched alarmingly to the right, embracing an openly fascist party.
How did it come to this?
A recent poll of UKIP supporters found 51% of them felt immigrants should be helped to return to their countries of birth, plus their families even if they were born here.
If enacted into law, this would have issues for quite a few people including me.
My grandfather on my dad's side came to England from Norway. He was too young to fight in World War 1 and too old to fight in World War 2 but during the latter he helped enforce the nightly black outs in Bristol, walking the streets as the deadly Luftwaffe bombed the city below.
My dad joined the Merchant Navy at 15, joining the Atlantic convoys who helped feed the British people, dodging the U boats.
Some years after the war, my father met my mother in Rotterdam.
My mother's family lost three homes during World War 2 and all their possessions several times over.
In the 1950s, she married my father and moved to Britain where she stayed for the rest of her life.
No one in my family ever claimed benefits - in fact my grandfather worked well into his late seventies.
They're all dead now but the fact remains that I am the son of people who came to this country. And in the eyes of many UKIP supporters, I should be repatriated. Should it be to Norway, where I have never been, or the Netherlands? And should my own children be 'sent back' too? Where does the line of immigration end?
Obviously, I don't know what the reaction of neighbours was when Alfred Johansen arrived from Norway. Were they concerned he would take their job or bring with him his own Scandinavian culture? If his new neighbours had been an early version of the Farages, would they have protested and made racist comments about him?
Or when Neeltje Verburg arrived from the Netherlands. Did they really want her sort in their neighbourhood, even though she spoke near perfect English? And what if she started breeding?
We live, so say, in enlightened times but just how enlightened are they really?
Britain has returned MEPs who support the break up of the NHS, the return of grammar schools, who want to double defence spending, to ensure the very richest are taxed at the same rate of the very poorest and who blame nearly all our problems on foreigners (the main UKIP issue).
Whilst UKIP represents the hopefully temporary triumph of hate over hope, it is currently a step too far to compare them with openly fascist parties, but only a step.
At times of high unemployment and austerity political extremists gain support because of fear. Look at the rise of the German Nazis for example and the National Front here in the UK before Thatcher came along and stole their clothes. And now the rise of UKIP has effectively destroyed the fascist BNP.
Laughably, Farage presents himself as somehow anti-establishment, as befits a privately educated former city trader. The beer-swilling, cigarette-smoking man-of-the-people image he presents is a million miles away from the reality.
The media, and in particular, the BBC has a lot to answer for here, embracing as it has personality politics, ignoring it's public service ethic.
Papers like the Daily Mail present politics as they present Britain, where everything is broken and nothing works and we're being engulfed by benefit-scrounging foreigners.
UKIP feeds from this discontent like flies on a cow pat and in a country and a world which has suffered terribly since Farage's friends in the city establishment almost destroyed our economy people reach for simplistic alternatives and someone to blame.
In my view, the political parties need to react positively to what is happening.
Cameron's Tories will, I am sure, react by moving to the right and by saying all the 'right' things on immigration to, as they will see it, appease those who have moved to UKIP.
The parties of the centre and centre left need to argue a very different case.
The reality remains that the UK remains 89% white and we are not being swamped.
The overwhelming majority of people who come to the UK do so to work, just like the overwhelming majority of Brits who go to Europe.
Someone needs to make the case that it benefits all of us to have an internationalist attitude and that pulling up the drawbridge now will be self-defeating.
Yes, UKIP's 'victory' was where two out of three people didn't bother to vote and seven out of 10 who did vote did not vote UKIP.
We really do need hope, not hate, and whilst hate has won this time we need people will positive ideas and vision to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Saturday 3 May 2014
The Gas are going down
Bristol Rovers got relegated today. How can this be?
I fell out of love with the club back in 2006 when all manner of things happened. The one that pained me most was when the Evening Post sent a junior report to tell me that I was to be removed from a weekly football column I shared with a close friend. He intimated that pressure had been exerted by the club but would not be more specific than that. It took me years to find out the real story, which even now I cannot relate because of the fear of those who are litigious in nature.
The upshot is that for as long as I can remember, the club has been in a mess. Not just on the pitch but off it. I felt that Bristol Rovers, with its sizeable fan base, should be in a much better place than it was. And I felt that, with the right amount of will, it could be achieved.
Move forward to today and Bristol Rovers now find themselves in the Conference. How can this have happened?
I have, for some time, argued that the club needs to have a long term plan, that it must stop spending money it doesn't have, that supporters should have a greater running in the way the club is run.
On the first point, it could be that the club really does have a long term plan. The problem could be that they have not been entirely successful in telling supporters what this plan is. All we see is a football club that bumbles along from one crisis to another. There was always a fear that one day the club's luck might run it. Today it did.
The second point it trickier. A senior official once told me it was impossible to run the club on a break even or better basis and that it would always, in effect, need to be propped up by directors. And there is merit in this. Supporters want success and are not generally bothered what it costs, as long as someone pays for it. This is all very well but sometime you reach a stage when the debts overwhelm you and the wolf comes to the door. You would not run your home or your own business on this basis so why run your football club like it?
Finally, supporter representation. We have tried a variety of ways of involving supporters in the running of the club. Sadly, we have ended up with a situation where two men with no previous history of involvement at the club have found themselves on the board courtesy of supporters donating a million quid to the club and have not the faintest idea how to represent them at all. Or maybe I should say they don't have the faintest interest in representing supporters? Yes, I should.
There were grown men crying on Radio Bristol tonight and even the manager sounded like he was in tears. But when the chairman was interviewed he kept saying, over and over again, that you need to take the emotion out of making decisions. Really?
Take emotion out of football and what do you have left? Emotion alone should not lead to poor decisions, it could if used correctly enhance them.
The chairman has already said, within an hour of relegation, that next season the club would have the top playing budget in the division and that Darrell Clarke would still be the manager. Does that mean the board was already planning for life outside the football league or did he make his comment based on emotion? Can't have it all ways.
I know what I'd do at the club but I've given up trying to tell people. It could be that my ideas, and those of others will far more knowledge and ability than I, won't work but they have to be better than what we have at the moment, don't they?
It shouldn't be my way or the highway at the Rovers but that's been the effective, or rather ineffective, mantra from the last 20 years and I don't see it changing.
It's very, very sad but if people really do want something different and something better, then writing a few things on a minor internet message board will not be enough.
None of us who were there before and failed to persuade people of our ideas will be trying again.
So if you want to change things at Rovers, good luck. I won't be with you in your efforts, not even in spirit because I think you will be wasting your time and you will end up as cynical, disillusioned and defeated as I am.
I fell out of love with the club back in 2006 when all manner of things happened. The one that pained me most was when the Evening Post sent a junior report to tell me that I was to be removed from a weekly football column I shared with a close friend. He intimated that pressure had been exerted by the club but would not be more specific than that. It took me years to find out the real story, which even now I cannot relate because of the fear of those who are litigious in nature.
The upshot is that for as long as I can remember, the club has been in a mess. Not just on the pitch but off it. I felt that Bristol Rovers, with its sizeable fan base, should be in a much better place than it was. And I felt that, with the right amount of will, it could be achieved.
Move forward to today and Bristol Rovers now find themselves in the Conference. How can this have happened?
I have, for some time, argued that the club needs to have a long term plan, that it must stop spending money it doesn't have, that supporters should have a greater running in the way the club is run.
On the first point, it could be that the club really does have a long term plan. The problem could be that they have not been entirely successful in telling supporters what this plan is. All we see is a football club that bumbles along from one crisis to another. There was always a fear that one day the club's luck might run it. Today it did.
The second point it trickier. A senior official once told me it was impossible to run the club on a break even or better basis and that it would always, in effect, need to be propped up by directors. And there is merit in this. Supporters want success and are not generally bothered what it costs, as long as someone pays for it. This is all very well but sometime you reach a stage when the debts overwhelm you and the wolf comes to the door. You would not run your home or your own business on this basis so why run your football club like it?
Finally, supporter representation. We have tried a variety of ways of involving supporters in the running of the club. Sadly, we have ended up with a situation where two men with no previous history of involvement at the club have found themselves on the board courtesy of supporters donating a million quid to the club and have not the faintest idea how to represent them at all. Or maybe I should say they don't have the faintest interest in representing supporters? Yes, I should.
There were grown men crying on Radio Bristol tonight and even the manager sounded like he was in tears. But when the chairman was interviewed he kept saying, over and over again, that you need to take the emotion out of making decisions. Really?
Take emotion out of football and what do you have left? Emotion alone should not lead to poor decisions, it could if used correctly enhance them.
The chairman has already said, within an hour of relegation, that next season the club would have the top playing budget in the division and that Darrell Clarke would still be the manager. Does that mean the board was already planning for life outside the football league or did he make his comment based on emotion? Can't have it all ways.
I know what I'd do at the club but I've given up trying to tell people. It could be that my ideas, and those of others will far more knowledge and ability than I, won't work but they have to be better than what we have at the moment, don't they?
It shouldn't be my way or the highway at the Rovers but that's been the effective, or rather ineffective, mantra from the last 20 years and I don't see it changing.
It's very, very sad but if people really do want something different and something better, then writing a few things on a minor internet message board will not be enough.
None of us who were there before and failed to persuade people of our ideas will be trying again.
So if you want to change things at Rovers, good luck. I won't be with you in your efforts, not even in spirit because I think you will be wasting your time and you will end up as cynical, disillusioned and defeated as I am.
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